TRACKLISTING
1 Ella giammai m’amò (Filippo) Don Carlos Verdi
2 Vieni, o Levita! … Tu sul labbro dei veggenti (Zaccaria) Nabucco Verdi
3 Che mai vegg’io … Infelice! e tu credevi (Silva) Ernani Verdi
4 Di sposo, di padre le gioie serene (Rosa) Salvator Rosa Gomes
5 Il lacerato spirito (Fiesco) Simon Boccanegra Verdi
6 Seigneur, rampart et seul soutien (Choral de Luther) ... Piff, paff, piff (Marcel) Les Huguenots Meyerbeer
7 Nonnes, qui reposez (Bertram) Robert le diable Meyerbeer
8 Si la rigeur (Cardinal de Brogni) La Juive Halévy

RECORDING INFORMATION
The legendary Italian bass Cesare Siepi was one of the great Don Giovanni’s and at the height of his career — during the 1950s and 1960s — this particular role was very much his “calling card”. In Decca’s 1955 recording of the complete opera under Josef Krips he sang the title-role and this set has remained one of the classics of the gramophone. The year before the complete Don Giovanni Siepi recorded the present album of arias in which several of his other important roles are essayed. Filippo II in Don Carlos, Zaccaria in Nabucco, and Fiesco in Simon Boccanegra are just three of the roles in which he can be heard in this programme and for which he was acclaimed throughout the operatic world.

Siepi was born in Milan on 10 February 1923 and was essentially self-taught. His debut was in 1941 when he sang Sparafucile (Rigoletto) at Schio (near Venice); his La Scala debut followed after the war when he sang Zaccaria in 1946. When the La Scala company visited Covent Garden in 1950 Siepi was one of the singers, and that same year he made his Metropolitan Opera debut. This was as Filippo II in a new production of Don Carlos, and this marked the beginning of an association with the Met that would last for twenty-four years.

This recital is a wonderful reminder of this legendary bass and appears on CD as the original programme for the first time.